Thriving Lives Toolkit: enhancing school collaboration
Aim: To explore the potential use of the Thriving Lives Toolkit to enhance collaboration between educational settings in support of Service children’s educational progression.
Partners: The project is funded by the Southern Universities Network and run in collaboration with the Hampshire District Coordinators Network.
Outcomes: The project built a qualitative picture of how the Toolkit might foster collaboration and practice-sharing between stakeholders to:
- Facilitate collaborative work across Hampshire for schools to pilot and use the tool
- Evaluate the collaboration generated and its impact
- Analyse the way the Toolkit has provided an impetus for collaboration among schools
- Evaluate how important this impact is to schools with smaller numbers of Service children
- Generate recommendations for future enhancement of the Toolkit
The project reported in March 2022.
Key findings included:
•Focus on core activity can restrict collaboration on this cohort. Resources should be designed to dovetail with schools’ highest priorities
•An electronic resource, supported via online engagement, would require less initial commitment
•The Toolkit can facilitate collaboration between schools on common, shared challenges.
•The toolkit was helpful in prioritising shared issues and justifying the targeting of time, attention and resources
•Resources such as the Thriving Lives Toolkit should be promoted within existing networks and forums that already bring schools together
•Engaging with the principles of the Toolkit may in itself prompt schools to reach out to other schools, support networks and the service community
•Greater signposting to sources of support would be valuable
